Bush II Goes to War Whether Congress Likes It or Not

This is the first part of a three part series on the
“Imperial Presidency.”

Rising Republican star Herman Cain got quite the shock last week
when he learned about the powers President Obama claims in the name
of national security.

“This is the first that I have heard,” Cain exclaimed to his
interviewer, the Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf. “You’re
saying it’s OK to take out American citizens if he suspects they
are terrorist-related. Is that what you said?!”

When Friedersdorf explained, yes, that’s Obama’s position, a
horrified Cain replied: “If you’re a citizen, no, it is not right
for the president to think he has the power to have you
assassinated. No.”

Sure, a presidential candidate like Cain should do a better job
following the news, but his unscripted reaction was the only
appropriate one for a limited-government conservative — a
“gaffe” only in Michael Kinsley’s sardonic definition: that rare
occasion when a pol accidentally blurts the truth The truth is that
American presidents have more power than we can safely entrust to
any fallible human being. That was so even before the massive
expansion of presidential power that followed Sept. 11.

Civil libertarians once
looked to this president to right the constitutional
balance.

Civil libertarians once looked to this president to right the
constitutional balance. But what Obama has wrought is the same old
“Terror Presidency” with new rhetoric.

Gen. Michael Hayden, President George W. Bush’s CIA director,
notes a “powerful continuity” between the two administrations on
national security powers. Even former Vice President Dick Cheney
now grudgingly praises Obama for leaving most of the Bush framework
intact.

In some areas, “44” has gone even further than “43.” Bush
claimed “inherent power” to attack other countries at will, but
never fought a war without congressional authorization.

Our new “decider” launched a war in Libya without so much as a
by-your-leave to Congress. “It’s nice to have a neocon back in the
White House,” the Washington Times enthused as the
Tomahawks began to fly.

Your mileage may vary, though — especially if you worry
about domestic spying. Last week’s Patriot Act fight, in which the
administration leaned on congressional allies to quash debate,
highlighted how much Obama has “grown in office.”

“No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are
not suspected of a crime.” Obama promised on the campaign
trail.

Yet the Justice Department’s latest report to Congress shows
record-high use of NSLs: More than 14,000 Americans had their
records searched last year using this extraordinary legal device,
which allows the government to demand sensitive personal data like
phone and bank records without the inconvenience of judicial
review.

Will these vast powers be abused? We may never know, given
Obama’s legal position that the “state secrets privilege” goes
beyond protecting “sources and methods” — it lets him quash
entire lawsuits, barring the courthouse door to citizens fearing
their rights have been violated.

There’s a strange disconnect in the talk-radio right’s view of
Obama: Apparently, he’s a crypto-socialist with sinister designs on
our liberties, yet it’s vitally important that he have the
authority to wiretap Americans at will and assassinate them while
they’re abroad.

Even thoughtful conservatives seem to imagine you can have a
presidency that’s unrestrained abroad and constitutionally confined
within our borders — even though the war on terror has no
fixed battlefield and foreign policy powers apply here at home.

However troubling you find the jihadist threat — lately
limited to the occasional dud crotch-bomb — you should be
uneasy about concentrating such vast powers in an office that can
periodically be seized by a relative unknown with easy charm and
burning ambition.

I worry that Obama has these powers; I worry even more that
future presidents will have them as well.